Failing to recognise a vehicle’s source is not limited to the Spanish. For decades, General Motors, for example, has juggled its own brand names, plus others that it has been associated with, in some increasingly strained efforts to attempt sell more cars and inexpensively shoehorn a model into a market sector via another car brand.
In the USA, for example, the sub-compact Pontiac Le Mans was simply a re-badged Daewoo Nexia, with no mention made of its South Korean origins. The same goes for Geo models in the USA, derived from various Japanese Toyotas and Suzukis, plus the unsuccessful Passport and Asuna model ranges in Canada (mostly Suzuki and Isuzu cast-offs).
For the UK, some Holdens were sold as Vauxhalls (Monaro, VXR-8), with no acknowledgement of their Australian roots, with other brand-diluting GM outrages such as the Saab 9-2X (a mildly modified Subaru Impreza) and 9-7X (a knee jerk SUV fix, based on the underwhelming Chevrolet TrailBlazer) being sold in North America, where they struggled to attract customers, be they unconvinced Saab fans or general premium car buyers. The same went for the Saab 9-3-based Cadillac BLS; its BLS initials quickly attracting the nickname “Bit Like (a) Saab!”
GM’s rival Ford frequently tried this trick as well, selling the Kia Pride as the Festiva in the USA, with the Mazda 121 clone of the Ford Fiesta in Europe making no mention whatsoever of the ‘other’ base car brand. Ahead of these, in the late 1960s the Willys-Overland-developed Corcel – a family car created in Brazil in parallel with its Renault 12 cousin – never actually made it on to the market branded as a Willys; the model being launched in 1968 as the Ford Corcel, despite no input from Ford into the popular car’s creation.